For most of my childhood from about age 7 through my teen age years, I was a part of a Scouting program of some sorts. In the younger days, I was, of course, a Cub Scout. Then, once I reached that magical age of, well, I don’t really remember what age it was that I transitioned from Cubs to the full blown Boy Scouts. But the one thing I do remember is that I was NEVER worried about any kind of possible sexual abuse.
The Boy Scouts of America have announced that they are considering rescinding their decades old position of excluding homosexuals from membership and leadership.
“Considering”, “examining”, “looking into”, are all terms and phrases that basically mean the decision is already made! For as my friend Bryan Fischer has written, they would never in a million years float such an incendiary idea unless they had already made up their minds!
Some are appalled that we on the conservative, religious right are appalled! Let me see if I can explain.
My fondest memories of Scouting, beyond working on my radio merit badges at the state fair, were the camping excursions. My troop went camping a lot. I mean a lot! It seemed that we were either off camping somewhere or back at the troop house planing the next camping trip. We even had a unique camp site in south Mississippi that we named after our troop.
We loved to camp.
A lot!
Now just imagine with me for a moment what that camping environment would be like. (Here is where the ire of our detractors will come. They already anticipate where I’m going with this and they’re shouting at the page in anger!). Imagine with me a troop of young boys, ranging in ages from 12-16. These young boys are going to be out in the woods, away from their parents. Not just away from their parents but away from any contact with their parents! Back in my day, there were no cell phones. And today, most camps sites are out cell range.
They will be out in the woods for 2-4 days, nights, depending on what time of the year it is. They will sleep in pairs or threes, in sleeping bags, in tents or out in the open. They will shower or wash in the creeks or lakes that outline their camp site. It would be nothing for boys to wonder around with their shirts off, or sometimes just in their underwear or swim suit because they had just been to the “latrine” or to the swimming hole. These will all be under the direction of the Scout leader who lead them there.
Now, you could say that I am setting up a scenario that is just my own. That there are no reports of the kind of activities that my evil mind is conjuring up. That our homosexual friends want nothing more than to lead those young men to maturity and personal growth. And I’m evil for believing that such horrible thoughts could be reality!
But then, I would refer you again, to my friend Bryan Fischer’s latest article where he reminds us all of the Jerry Sandusky story! Say whatever you will about ole Jerry, but man on boy sex is homosexuality. There’s no other name for it!
I beg you to consider it in this light:
Gays say that they are made the way they are, that God has made them that way. So, first of all, would we not be asking a gay Scout leader to deny the “natural impulses of how God made him”!
We must also remember that a gay man would look at another male in the same way that a straight man would look at a female. So, with that in mind, change my camp scenario and make the scout leader a straight man and the kids he’s taken camping all beautiful teen age girls! You nor I WOULD EVER AGREE to that as a sensible and trustworthy environment for our children!
Why is it that we are fighting to set our kids up with gay men in that same kind of environment?
Don’t say it never happens! Don’t say that I’m dreaming up an unlikely scenario simply because I’m a part of a “hate group” (they call us haters because we tell the truth out of love for their eternal souls! They have redefined “disagreement” as “hate”!)
But I would tell you that what COULD happen was something that I NEVER worried about happening when I was Scout. Why? Because it was UNTHINKABLE in 1967 that our adults would EVER put their children in an environment where the unthinkable could happen!
Homosexuals would decry me as setting the scene to say that all homosexuals are pedophiles, or that pedophiles are all homosexuals.
But there is no mistaking the fact that homosexuals are known, by their own admission, to have multiple sexual partners, sometimes as many as a hundred or more partners. Shocking, I know! But you see, we make a dreadful mistake when we think of the homosexual relationship in the same vein as we would think of the average heterosexual relationship. They are NOT the same and they do not function the same.
I KNOW that all homosexuals are not pedophiles. But, ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE A CHANCE WITH THE LIFE OF YOUR SON, that a homosexual that has been placed in the position of a Scout Leader, will not, will NEVER put your son in a compromising situation? Really? If you do, you’ve redefined “faith” in a whole new way for me!
The Scout oath requires a Scout to commit to “God and Country” to be “morally straight”. I don’t see how a Scout could ever make an oath before God to be morally straight when he has submitted himself to be led, trained, educated and modeled after one whom God has already described as immoral!
The gay community is very concerned about gay children being bullied and wrestling with suicide. I am dreadfully worried about those issues as well. No one wants a child to be bullied and certainly we would never want a child to wrestle with much less choose suicide! But what could happen when you place a gay kid in a group of straight kids in a closed environment such as Scouting is? Is there not an increased worry of bullying and rejection that might cause a child to think of suicide? I know, your answer to that is to knock down those barriers like the one Scouting has erected for more than a decade and blaze a new way for gay children to take a part in Scouting! Sounds really good, doesn’t it? Until you realize the kind of environment you’re talking about and develop those camping scenarios that I’ve outline above.
I didn’t have to worry that my scout leader was a man who liked men, and how that might play out once we all got to Camp 104 (not our real troop number!) and starting our weekend of camping. I didn’t have to worry about it because it would have been UNTHINKABLE.
It should be just as UNTHINKABLE for our kids of 2013 to have to worry about it as well!
